Getting On

Getting On is a tiny triumph, a mournful, relentlessly downbeat sitcom that isn't actually funny but somehow makes you laugh even while you're pummelled by its bleak portrait of the NHS.

Its three writers and stars - Vicki Pepperdine, the Bafta-winning Jo Brand, and Joanna Scanlan - return to a new ward and a new health trust in the third series. But nothing much has changed.

Dr Pippa Moore (Pepperdine) is painfully self-obsessed and lacking in empathy ("I've had a mini-break to celebrate my decree nisi"), nurse Kim (Brand) cares but is buried by a landslide of political correctness, while sister Den (Scanlan) tries to keep her head above the jargon.

At times it seems that everyone talks but no one listens, and there are some comically excruciating scenes involving the clipped and hopeless Pippa as she tries to discuss her female genitalia project.

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A welcome and timely return for this hospital sitcom, which might not be a gag-fest in the traditional sense but has established itself as a worthy addition to the canon of workplace comedies. As we rejoin the gang, they're establishing themselves on a new ward. Consultant Pippa (Vicky Pepperdine) is still buzzing around irritatingly. Sister Den (Joanna Scanlan) is making mountains out of molehills. And nurse Kim (Jo Brand) is calmly getting the job done, while nipping out for an occasional fag and bearing the brunt of the odd hissy fit from her senior colleagues. Tonight, an old lady is suspected of hypochondria and Hilary, who's now inspecting on behalf of a private healthcare organisation, is poking his nose in. Funny, charming and gently subversive.

If Getting On (BBC4), Jo Brand, Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine's sitcom set in a geriatric ward, makes it to a ninth series, I'll be very happy. Though to call it a sitcom is to do the show a disservice, as it's got far fewer gags and many more laughs than most. As well as being darkly funny - old age and death are both subjects rich in humour for the self-aware, the middle-aged or the deeply unpleasant - Getting On is also tender and surprisingly moving, as Nurse Kim (Brand) and Sister Den (Scanlan) try to ignore Dr Pippa (Pepperdine) and treat the patients with an entirely believable mixture of indifference and respect.

Most of all, everything about this show feels real and unforced: from what's included - such as the sheet shortages - to what's not. Few of the patients speak; fewer still have any visitors. Getting old is most definitely not for wimps, and Getting On should be prescribed viewing for everyone.

Getting On, BBC Four, series 3 episode 1, review

The Bafta-deserving brilliance of Getting On is not confined to its gags, gaffes and awkward pauses. It achieves that rare sitcom trick - pulled off by The Office but not by The Thick of It - of making you believe in and care about its characters even as the script throws rotten fruit at them.

Getting On: Series 3, episode 1: review

Like many single-camera sitcoms devoid of a studio audience, the humour is very subtle: eschewing easy laughs for gritty realism and three-dimensional characterisation.

Getting On, series 3, BBC Four

The NHS comedy is in rude health as it moves into a smart new hospital.

One of the most underrated BBC comedies

There are some programmes that just don't get the respect they deserve and returning comedy Getting On is one of them.

A third series for the scalpel-sharp comedy set in a geriatric ward. Co-written by its stars Jo Brand, Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine, it manages to veer between the truthful and the ridiculous in capturing life in an efficiency-driven NHS hospital. Stoic Nurse Kim Wilde (Brand), fraught Sister Den Flixter (Scanlan) and officious Doctor Pippa Moore (Pepperdine) are now working out of a new ward, K2, at a hospital, St Jude's, close to their old one. The equipment might be better but the familiar issues remain among their sick, dying and occasionally hypochondriac patients.

Return of the dry medical comedy starring and written by Jo Brand, Vicki Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlan, and set in the geriatric ward of an NHS hospital. Kim, Den and Pippa move to ward K2 in St Jude's while their own hospital closes for a possible (but in no way guaranteed) refurb. Meanwhile, Pippa is causing her usual brand of chaos/inconvenience (inchaosvenience?) - dumping her baggage, figuratively and literally, all over her colleagues. Perfectly judged performances and great writing.